Conference: Re-reading Rembrandt

Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA)

Saturday, December 2nd 2006.

Speakers include Mieke Bal, Harry Berger, Jr. and Griselda Pollock.
Organised by Itay Sapir.

Venue: Aula, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Singel 411 (Tram stop: Spui),

Free entrance, all welcome!

2006, the year of Rembrandt's 400th birthday, was declared Rembrandtjaar
(Rembrandt year) in the Netherlands and is being celebrated elsewhere in the
world of art history and museology. It seems, however, that a real
contemporary approach, one that crosses disciplinary boundaries and that
sees this year as an opportunity to analyse Rembrandt's art as a cultural
object, has been so far singularly neglected. Indeed, the celebrations seem
concentrated on questions of attribution - i.e. the exact delimitation of
the "real" Rembrandt corpus - and of anecdotal biography - that is, the
"life and works" all-too-familiar schema recounting who the dear son of
Holland's Golden Age actually was.

ASCA, as an institute devoted to the study of culture in a contemporary
context, and to the constant questioning of accepted ideas, is organising a
one-day conference to coincide with the end of the Rembrandtjaar. In it, we
propose to consider Rembrandt as both a historical figure and as a general
name for a group of artefacts with which our own time is yet to come to
terms. We would like to challenge, among others, ideas of authenticity, of
homogeneous cultural context, of the Dutch 17th century as an undisputed
"Golden Age", and of Rembrandt's paintings as vehicles of coherent,
transparent narrativity.

The conference coincides with the 15th anniversary, and the long-awaited
reprinting, of Mieke Bal's groundbreaking Reading Rembrandt. We wish
therefore, to include in some of the presentations a reconsideration of this
work, and a continuation of the interaction it initiated between art
history, narratology, psychoanalysis, gender studies, semiotics and other
fields of study. Rembrandt's corpus of works being as rich and vast as it
is, "Reading Rembrandt" is a never-ending process, and we would like to
engage in another re-reading >from the vantage point of 2006.

Re-reading Rembrandt: Programme

Morning Session: Narrating, Reading, Speculating (Chair : )

9:30 - 9:45 Willem G. Weststeijn (ASCA's director) - Opening remarks

9:45 - 10:45 Harry Berger Jr. (University of California, Santa Cruz): The
Drama of Competitive Posing: Portrait Plots in Hals and Rembrandt.

10:45 - 11:25 Itay Sapir (ASCA, UvA & EHESS, Paris): Bathsheba's text,
Maria's texture : Re-ciphering the obscure pictorial writings of Rembrandt
and Caravaggio.

11:25 - 11:45 Coffee break

11:45 - 12:15 Ronald R. Bernier (Wilkes University, Pennsylvania): The
Economy of Salvation: Narrative and Liminality in Rembrandt's Death of the
Virgin.

12:15 - 12:45 Erin Griffey (University of Auckland, New Zealand):
Master-Pieces: Speculations on Six Rembrandt Paintings.

12:45 - 13:15 Mary Barker (University of Auckland, New Zealand): Seeing Red:
Rembrandt and his Jewish Bride.

13:15 - 14:15 Lunch break

Afternoon Session: Reacting, Rewriting, Recycling (Chair: Rachel Esner)

14:15 - 15:15 Griselda Pollock (Leeds University, UK): Unstable Identities
and the Politics of Reading : Rembrandt via Van Gogh and Back.

15:15 - 15:45 Herman Rapaport (Wake Forest University, North Carolina): The
Assumption of the Image: Some Remarks on Rembrandt and Monet.

15:45 - 16:15 Jean-Marie Clarke (Independent scholar and artist, Germany) :
Confessions of a Rembrandt Addict: on Jean Genet's Rembrandt.

16:15 - 16:30 Coffee break

16:30 - 17:00 Claudia Cieri-Via (La Sapienza University, Rome): Aby
Warburg's Rembrandt Lecture : about the Oath of Claudius Civilis.

17:00 - 18:00 Mieke Bal (Dutch Royal Academy Professor, ASCA, UvA): A
Rembrandt for Our Time

Note: All lecture times include 15-10 min. discussion.